Levi and Petra Drabble Series: Of Broken Litany's
by myshippingdock
Summary: Levi was a fool. He had become painfully accustomed to her. So damn accustomed he could sense it when she so much as flicked her eyelashes at something. He could pick apart the damn nuances in her smiles for god's sake. Her smiles.
1. Chapter 1

Prompt: Her smiles.

Levi was a fool.

He had become painfully accustomed to her.

So damn accustomed he could sense it when she so much as flicked her eyelashes at something.

He could pick apart the damn nuances in her smiles for god's sake.

Her _smiles_.

God, he could write a damn litany on the angles and slopes of her smiles. Erwin and Hange would give him a fucking A if he were to write an in depth report titled Petra Ral's smiles. Hange would go further and hoot unbearably at him, titling him a shitty sentimental idiot.

But damn she'd be _right_. For Petra, he was all the shitty sentimental things he normally wasn't.

God, he didn't know when he'd begun to know her smiles and not-smiles inside out.

Petra wasn't an overly idealistic, happy- go lucky green girl, and she didn't go around being optimistic and smiling all the fucking time but she smiled all the same. And they lodged in his throat and nearly undid him.

The mischievous dazzle in the upturn of her provocative little mouth when she wanted something. The cute, sad little furrow of her brows when she was trying to be reassuring and keep their spirits up. The delightful cleft of a dimple in her right cheek sneaking up on him when she was ecstatic and beaming brightly up at him. The quiet, silent tilt of her expressive lips when she flashed him the quick assured smile of an alert battle-hardened soldier.

The swift, nervous tilt and distracting nibble of her lips when she was conscious of herself or _something_. The annoyed gleam of a smile when she was simply maddeningly, irritated. The admiring lilt of her lips when she was awed and thoroughly impressed with him.

The bored, dazed smile curving the bottom half of her lips as she tried to bite it down and set a good example during uneventful missions. The sharp, moody, dramatic pull of her almost, but not quite smiling lips that told him she was displeased and unhappy about something. The light giggles escaping her, unbidden and reckless, when she found him amusing and silly.

The secret, private smile that flushed her cheeks a pretty, dusky red and came and went and peeved him to no end and drove him wild with a latent curiosity. The soft quirk of her lips above the rim of her cup before she sipped her tea when she figured him out to be something different than what was expected. The special smile that stayed beyond the gruff, childish, obsessive cleaning freak she knew him to be instead of the distant, polite, intimidating Lance Corporal he was supposed to be that endeared him to a sweet, grim madness.

The lazy, sleepy grin with indecipherable hints and teases in the stretch of her full lips that she carelessly shot at him on their days off and made him think of berries and wines and whisky and rum and a shitload of paper work and titan blood and deaths to erase it from his mind.

The simple unassuming smiles that popped up on bright, sunny days when birds chirped noisily and flowers poked through the dirty grass in shitty meadows, or glimpses of rainbows after fresh rain, or the tranquil, peaceful hum of her sweet lips curving naturally upwards following an affectionate pat of her handsome horse's head that he felt to the inside of his bones was a rare treat.

The harsh, fierce smile of pain and blazing pride that bore and shone with the responsibility of the wings of freedom etched firmly on the scorch of her heart as on the Survey Corps cloth emblem, across her breast pockets, the side of her arms and the small spine of her back. The broken, cracked smile that stretched thinly and painfully over trembling lips that tasted her metallic tears, smelled the blood of death and breathed in the rotting air of the shitty world they lived in, didn't escape him either, twisting his gut with the same ache.

And the clean, bright burn of vulnerable, fleeting smiles he couldn't stop himself from imagining, soft and warm and alive, pressing against his unsmiling lips, coaxing him into some semblance of one. Smiles that belonged to a world, free and clean, and not as ugly as theirs.

And the worst of it all, was that he could still go on and on about her damn smiles and how they made him feel so damn much. Every damn smile of hers, imagined and real, took his shitty damn breath away.

They gave him this weird, constant, uncomfortable ache in the gloomy pit of his taut stomach. They made him feel strangely light-headed and barely able to grouse at her when they happened to him.

And he realized with the force of a blade twisting his gut that her _smiles_ saw him through…

And she wasn't _there_ anymore. She wasn't there to smile for him.

 _So he relied on the ragged beat of his memory instead._ And the sharp, painful glimpses he stored and locked away in the deepest recesses of his beating heart. He was hideously glad he had become so bloody accustomed to her he could record every agonizing nuance and bloody detail of her evergreen smiles and immortalized them to memory for his greedy use.

 _Surviving without would have been near damn callous and impossible._


	2. Chapter 2

June 25th. Levi and Petra.

Prompt: day-off, routines and constants

He stayed inside on his day-offs.

He preferred to work in his office. There was always a ton of macabre paperwork to do for the Survey Corp's dead. When he felt like it, he stepped away from the obligation reports and routine.

Rare times. But even he needed to inhale fresh bites of the tainted air in the vicinity of his posted area. Or when Erwin, Hange or Petra insisted on disrupting his regular routine for some reason.

He avoided going out to town unless he had to. More so after that one odd day he unconsciously accepted Petra's casual invite and came face to face with his shitty temptation. He didn't want a rehash of those feelings harping on his heart. No room for them in this ugly world.

 _But Petra was cute_. Irresistibly so.

He was keenly aware of the fact for a while now. And made a practice of practicing resistance once he realized he wasn't immune. Feeling that mind-numbing break in his internal composure and the clean, sharp crackling of heat in his insides for her was the last fucking thing he should be doing as her Corporal.

Not to mention their shitty reality had no place for shitty aches and emotions like these and from the likes of him no less. So he rejected the irregular beat of his heart for her and warm curl of desire knotting the hollow of his stomach without a second thought.

Blood and gore and screech of mankind and titans and his goddamned soldiers was all his world was about and must be. At least until the end of war; if they ever managed to survive it.

 _He wasn't made for it too._

For holy whispers and brave litanies. Or kind prayers and sweet nothings that couldn't be. Not in the damning, unholy shit of his past or the unforgiving present of his reality.

And he reminded himself of it every-time she made him feel things he shouldn't.

The only luxury he allowed himself with her was the tea he often had privately with her in his rooms.

He had decided a long time ago his feelings for her were only a liability if he gave it weight. It was near damn inappropriate of him anyway. He was practically an old man, almost thirty five. And she was so young, about nineteen or twenty?

No matter the weight of maturity in fierce doe-eyes that grazed over him with an emphatic, repressed longing that resonated with him at his core when she thought he wasn't looking.

Even if she was adult enough to know her mind. Even if she had lived through the many hells he had. Even if she didn't mind his sordid past, his clean-freak, irritable personality or his social inadequacies. Even if she understood with every beat of her heart that they were soldiers first and foremost, their heartbeats on hire for humanity, no exceptions. Even if she was petite and small and the perfect size for an irritatingly pea-sized soldier like him. Even if she had the resolve to embrace him at his weakest and vulnerable, humanity's strongest or not. Even if- he paused, refusing to go off on that veritable tangent any longer.

 _She could just do so much better than him_. _Period._

He was just an ugly shorty, an embittered, cynical thug off the streets turned Corporal who started out dedicating his worthless being to the cause of mankind only because he had nothing else better to do with his life. Only because he hadn't wanted to die. And Isabel and Farlan.

 _He had wanted to find a clean, worthwhile existence for all of them._

And Erwin Smith had offered him a way out of their muddy existence.He had done a fine piece of work on him by enlisting him into the Survey Corps. His worthless life had a semblance of meaning now. Even if his two charges were gone.

Orphaned like him, and rotting in the tainted streets of the underground city, he had taken them under his inadequate care. The sweep of his clipped, broken wings hardly able to shelter them; but they had looked up to him, believed in him, like he had believed in them, and he had failed to protect them. The only friends and family he had before the Special Ops Squad, his Mother, and Kenny Ackerman.

Before he became Lance Corporal Levi, humanity's strongest at Erwin's bidding.

He trusted the man. He felt strongly like he owed Erwin for giving him a new lease to life despite everything. He had lost men under his command countless times since that first time; every loss strengthening his resolve, and giving the mission of his life a stronger purpose.

He said he wouldn't become personally responsible for lives aside from Farlan and Isabel. His Special Operations Squad became his first new exception. He chose them carefully and wisely, one important reason being their knack of living through countless hells and staying strong through it.

They weren't invincible though and neither was he.

The titans were an unpredictable and incomprehensible enemy. The odds were always going to be stacked against them. He told himself he would do well to remember his place and not seek out more meaning in Petra's existence than he could afford as humanity's strongest.

Petra herself was dedicated to his cause.

She understood that humanity needed humanity's strongest to remain focused.

He was careful she didn't detect his interest or attraction and become creeped out by him. _Petra_ was the kind of girl you want to marry as much as you want to sex her up, and e _ven if she was willing to appease him sexually_ , he didn't _want_ to take advantage of her. _Not yet_.

He liked her a bit too much for that. He wasn't even sure _what she wanted from him exactly?_

She admired him with a sincere ferocity that dazzled and baffled him. Bright-eyed kids in town, bitten by the hero-worshipping bug and eager to enlist looked up at him with a similar awe that he found disconcerting already. But Petra was different.

She was just as bright-eyed, and eager to be of service to him as the rest of his squad. And his special squad all knew him well enough by now. Their admiration for him in the context of titan killings or otherwise hadn't waned in the least. But Petra was still different. Still _special somehow_.

And he suspected most of it had to do with Petra herself and his own growing partiality for her company. Because stepping out of the underground and into the survey corps, _she_ was something unfathomable and unexpected. He had never anticipated finding somebody like her.

He had never expected his own soul to want to meld into hers.

 _Because nobody looked at him like Petra did._

And she looked at him good. Like he was beyond all he was; and more than all of it and he was drunk on that and _her_ and felt compelled to look back at her. His heart had never felt that odd tug of desire and ache it did for anybody else but _Petra_. And it almost undid him.

 _Something about her pulled at his heartstrings and he was caught._

 _Petra,_ for him, was indescribable. There was an indefinable crackle of something heavy and potent between them. He could tell that much, and it was both, humbling and pleasing to him.

She could do so much better, and yet, she had chosen _him_. He couldn't understand her attraction even as he secretly indulged in it.

 _He_ was nothing special aside from being an un-typical sort of Humanity's Strongest.

 _She,_ on the other hand was the stuff of dreams shitty soldiers in barracks sighed after.

A nice, clean girl, with a pretty face who looked sexy as shit in her soldiers trappings and leather boots, and understood the demands of a soldier's life to boot. He knew there was more to her than that inadequate description, and he liked all he saw and knew.

He couldn't imagine what she saw in him that she liked. He cut an almost entirely opposite figure to the expected image of Humanity's Strongest and knowing him personally, she'd embraced all his quirks spiritedly instead of shying away from him or finding him uncouth or weird.

Maybe she did think him all of that, but she didn't misunderstand him and keep her distance from him regardless. And she _liked_ him; really, really _liked_ liked him.

 _A girl like that had never happened to him before._ And it was overwhelming. She was the closest thing to decent in his life and he hadn't seen a lot of decent in his lifetime. Contrary to his resolve, he didn't want to let a good, sweet, clean thing like her slip away from him. _He'd be damned if he did._

Because _she wanted him_. And _he wanted her back_. That sort of thing just didn't happen to _him often_. That sort of thing just didn't happen to _him. Period._

But he had to know more. _To what extent did she care for him_? To what capacity was she interested? Auruo's obnoxious teasing _suggested_ , but it wasn't enough to detect… How head-over-heels-starry-eyed was she for him really? What were her expectations?

He had to _know_. Because he'd make do with all or nothing, if she told him what _she_ wanted _._

She didn't let on that easily though, because Petra was always at her most professional around him.

She didn't cower. She said her piece and her mind about him without fear. Nor did she slip into daydreams or blush and giggle mindlessly like a school-girl with a crush. She was an exemplary soldier and rarely let her feelings get in the way of her duty. And he liked these things about her too.

If he hadn't been watching her as closely as he had, he probably wouldn't have been able to tell.

He just wasn't sure what to do with his knowledge.

He would commit all of his shitty self to her if that was what she desired, but… despite all his brave feats on the titan battlefield, he was a socially inept, coward.

He didn't want to taint her aspirations and admiration for him with his own shitty feelings and cloud their reality by stepping out of the boundaries they had set for themselves. What if Erwin demanded she be shifted to another survey-corps squad because they were indiscreet about their affections or outright broke the military relationships protocol?

He didn't think either of them could stand that. He had already become too damned attached.

Whatever this was between them, they had to keep it discreet for as long as they could. Whether his feelings were mutual or not, and he suspected they were, they weren't feelings they could pursue or act upon in their current reality.

Not yet anyway. They weren't ready. _They weren't prepared for the consequences._

Maybe when they won the war and they survived it. Maybe behind closed doors, between the tangled spaces of their cherished tea-times, and his awkward courtship. He scoffed. Maybe if they were more than emotional cowards bound to the shitty rules of their shitty reality.

The lingering glances and accidental touches and them leisurely sipping tea together in private was all he could afford for the time-being. He hoped that would suffice.

They would have to figure out the nuances of their mutual attraction slowly, and head into unchartered territories when they felt ready for it. It wouldn't be an easy task to explore the depths of what was between them. It was unusual for him, but he felt a strange, almost painful excitement pulsing through him because of it.

He had already determined for himself that _he was fool enough_ \- _that he liked her enough_ \- _to want to marry her_. If she so much as gave him a sure indication _she did_ …. if she so much as gave him her beaming _-without-a-doubt-I'm all yours_ -no exceptions smile… If she so much as gave him a _simple Okay_ …

He would fuck all objections, and marry her in a heartbeat. But he knew her military standing meant something to her. She had joined the survey corps and become a member of his squad for reasons of her own. And it would be selfish of him to expect her to give it up for them.

A marriage could bring about complications and consequences neither him nor her were equipped to deal with as soldiers on hire for Humanity's cause. Not now.

But someday… maybe they could find a way to work around it… _Until then…_

Until they could get there…

 _He had to make sure survival was etched on the wings of their freedom._

In any case, he was digressing.

Aside from genuinely preferring it that way, _she_ was why he had taken to staying indoors outside of duty lately. He couldn't, and didn't go out of his way to avoid his squad. They tended to prefer hanging around him when they didn't have anything better to do anyway, so that was hard to do regardless. More often than not, if they didn't have family to visit or some errand to run, they naturally drifted back to their shitty headquarters, with shitty four-eyes dropping in from time to time.

He wondered sparingly if it was because they felt sorry for him and his lonely, irritable grump of an arse.

He carefully folded his fingers around the rim of his cup and sipped the coffee Petra made for him that morning. Even though it was her day-off, he noted quietly and his heart clenched as it always did when he thought of the little things she did for him outside of duty that she simply didn't have to.

He didn't remember when she had taken on the task more regularly.

But she made his morning coffees now, (and his men's as well, he reminded himself), anticipating his need for it before he got to it on his own. Before he knew it, the knots on his shoulder unknotted a bit and he relaxed into the new rhythm and constancy of her presence. Despite his caution, he had already allowed her to become more of a personal constant in his life than he intended.

He breathed a long, frustrated sigh, and inhaled as he sipped the last dreg of his coffee.

As he struggled to push all pretty musings of her away, he remembered her mentioning something important and he stilled. His favorite brand of tea was running out. He had made a mental note of it during their last te tate, intending to visit town when he had the chance, but had forgotten about it.

He blanched then. Fuck, this meant he had to go to town to buy some.

It was unavoidable. Restocking his tea and coffee supplies was an absolute must. _He couldn't survive without it given the insomniac he was_. He was not sure in the least if he was referring to his need of tea or the pleasure of her company. He inhaled and exhaled quietly.

It should be fine as long as he didn't run into Petra. He knew she liked to grace the town with visits once in a while, especially her father's place, but she had also taken to randomly staying in at times. He couldn't quite know which of the two she would choose to go with today.

It wasn't any of his business anyway that she would inform him before she left.

 _It was her day out_. The one day he wasn't her Corporal and she wasn't his subordinate. The one day she didn't have to wait on him or his orders or ask his permission or be at his beck and call or anticipate his needs or need of her specifically.

 _He would just have to risk it._

His tea was a priority he couldn't waive off. He simply _couldn't_ get by without it. Tea that _she_ made and shared with him, he grudgingly acquiesced silently, grimacing to himself as he shrugged into his formal black jacket.

If push came to shove, he could always ask her to get his specific tea leaves for him instead of going out himself, or worse, give into temptation and accompany her on her day out.

He was almost sure she would ask if she saw him. She was too naïve and impulsive to consider the possible repercussions of her friendly requests. Becoming unwittingly moony-eyed and affectionate, or flushing and going awkward around each other in the privacy of his rooms was one thing, but clashing eyes, soft and hard, and becoming flustered in public at informal settings, where anybody could tell something was off about them was another entirely.

He was jumping the gun though. He only had cause to worry if she happened to be heading out. For his sake and hers, he hoped she wasn't. He was very close to giving up and awkwardly damning himself to pursue her, and he didn't want to be pushed to the brink of his tea-cup any more than he was.

 _But of course, the universe was never on his side._

He furrowed his brows and stiffened as he heard the light tread of her footsteps behind him, the soft clear tones of her pleasant voice calling out to him.

"Heichou!"

He paused reflexively, and braced himself as he tilted his head to look at her. His face betrayed no expression, but despite himself he was caught off guard and his breath fumbled.

She was all fucking dolled up of course. Hadn't he established the universe loved to spite him like that?

Regardless, he urged himself to act normal and commented as carelessly as he could.

"Oh, all dressed up, Petra? Going to town?"

"Oh! Yes! Is Heichou going too?" she inquired excitedly, pretty orange-meadow light bulbs blinking cutely up at him, a perfect 2cm below through her slim lashes.

He was puzzled, a strange sort of bee buzzing in his stomach, creating honey. What the hell was she so enthusiastic about? It wouldn't be that much of a treat for her if he was going too, would it? He was dismal company.

"Aa. I have some business in town today."

"That's great! Do you want to-"

He cut her off, remembering his brilliant idea from earlier, becoming hastily excited himself. "Oh wait! This is good! If you're going to town anyway, then I don't have to go. Can you pick up my favorite brand of tea leaves for me?"

"Oh, uh Yes! I can do that." She answered less enthusiastically, a half-hearted smile quirking up at him.

Distracted by the few stray strands of her chin-length autumn hair tickling the mild, flushed cheekbones below the bright glow of her iris, he didn't notice the slight slump of her shoulders as she reluctantly complied with his request at first.

When he did, he felt a brief twinge of regret and disappointment in the pit of his stomach as she left him with a less spirited wave of her slender fingers than usual and a smile a little too bright and forced, that he almost back-tracked. He resisted the lure of his mixed feelings however, and clung to being proud of himself for averting the temptation of her company in public instead.

And he _tried_ to brush it off, but he still felt the unusual linger of her toobright smile as he strolled back to his office quietly. Regardless, he battled it out and firmly flung the feeling aside like he had done countless times before and pushed it to the back of his mind, relieved at getting out of that as easily as he had today.

He focused on one thought and one thought alone instead to help him cope.

And it _was_ a bright enough thought that it worked.

She was going to bring him his _tealeaves._ _He couldn't wait for her to get back for it._

He assured himself that all would be well in his world soon. And went back to his papers impatiently, thinking about his tea and coffee supplies. It was all he could do to keep himself from stomping and saying childishly,

" _Quickly Petra, your taking too long."_

Every morning and night after Petra was gone, he went about his routine and willed himself to forget.

Until it was time for her to bring him his coffee at the break of dawn or for them to leisurely sip their evening tea in the blanket of their room, and always….

…his first pathetic thought was that she was going to be there soon. She was just taking _too damn long that day for some shitty reason_ …

And then, _the shitty reason_ … his chilling realization would slowly hit him in the gut with the brute force of a titan's goliath swing, _always a second too late_. And he could feel his world tilting on its axis, spinning out of control, and viciously slamming a stone slab with her name on the grave-yard of his writhing heart, the pain fisting around his veins and squeezing until he was choking and coughing through the ache, unable to breathe.

Because _Petra_ never took that long to do her Corporal's bidding.

Because Petra was really _gone… And so was his squad._

 _Their deaths weren't just an ugly nightmare he could reset come morning light. And he trembled, gripping his paperwork and convulsing over his desk because there was no one to watch him._

He didn't know why he put himself through this torture every day.

It would be easier if he could bloody well accustom himself to her absence as he had her presence. But he couldn't do it. He expected the gutter-punch to his stomach to dull over time even if it never went away. If he had his way, he didn't ever want the pain to dull. _This recurring pain was all he had left._

His breathing constricted, and he began gasping and panting hard, sweat rolling down his face, the fucking fact of it hitting him again, and he had to gulp down the bile, and bite his lips to keep the screams in, his eyes moist.

And he had to take a while to find solid ground again. He couldn't tell how long through the raw ugly haze. When his harsh breathing subsided, he got up to do his coffee himself.

Tasting her in in it as he drank in quiet desperation. Gently swallowing down every solitary sip of the bitter, creamy concoction, his composure returning. It was almost therapeutic.

He remembered drinking her in similarly after returning to their base after the 57th expedition, his coffee strangely anchoring him through brushing away Eren's apology.

 _It was like Petra was there_ , telling them to trust her again and he heard his own voice telling them to make a fucking choice, regardless of right or wrong and to deal with the consequences no matter how heart-breaking.

And _he had to let Eren know._

The brat was beating himself up for things outside their control. Besides, as their Corporal, he had the most responsibility in this case. Petra had asked them to trust her, wanting it and like Eren, he had given in to her uncompromising belief and pressed Eren to make his choice, taking Petra's feelings into consideration. And he'd be damned if he would regret that.

 _Because Petra was trustworthy. And a damned skilled soldier. Believing in yourself or your comrades, neither was a choice worth regretting, especially when you were giving it your all._

She wouldn't have died if she could have helped it. She had never let him down before. And he was not about to believe she had this time either. _What happened was not her fault. Or Eren's. Or His._ Though he would like to blame himself and wallow in his misery, he wouldn't. The existence of that shitty intellectual female titan had been beyond all of their comprehension.

He would take responsibility by not letting _hers_ – _any of their sacrifices_ \- go to waste. With her gone, he had nothing personal at stake anymore. Nothing aside from his goals as Humanity's strongest, and the fresh-faced brats that were fast becoming his new squad. He wasn't alone.

Isn't that something Petra had tried to tell Eren? That one person couldn't do much on his own anyway no matter how hard he tried. That's why they acted as an organization and relied on each other. Well he would fucking remember that and treat them as he had the previous Special Ops Squad.

 _With the exception of Petra_. There was never going to be anything like her for him again.

If his solitary, morning coffees had become a sort of calming, bittersweet anchor for him, his evening tea's functioned in the exact opposite way and become an exercise in torture. Every sip was pain, and left a hollow, acrid taste in his mouth. She had only made him his morning coffees, but he had _shared_ his tea-times with her.

 _He put an end to it._

He retired to his room like usual and let the memories and private regrets crash into him, but he wouldn't drink his tea anymore. _He couldn't_. He couldn't find any solace in tea without Petra.

He had always been reluctant to envision a future for himself, but with _Petra_ , he had dared.

He had dared to pathetically hope for hopeless, impossible possibilities that could never be.

 _Those dreams died with her._ Without Petra, he could never resurrect them again.

As Petra had devoted herself to him and his cause, he was devoted to the same. He was Humanity's strongest ally and he would-could never forget it. He would fight to live for as long as he could be used and offer himself to the future of mankind, for the future of brats struggling underground, brats inside the walled cities and the brats in his squad. He would have his new squad rely on him and he would rely on them himself if needed. And if he were to die after giving it his all, he would have no regrets left.

Because all his regrets were dead and gone and beyond the grasp of his life.

Eren would learn, as would his other brats. That he still didn't know. That they could never know _._ No one could know the outcome of their choices in that one crucial moment.

There was no point in dwelling on the what-ifs _._

Those gone couldn't be brought back.

 _Petra_ was lost to him _…_ until the time came for him to bite it too _._

Since that morose conversation he had begun making his coffee himself again.

Always after waking up in cold sharp sweat and biting back the gray realization of her absence.

 _Tea had lost its flavor for him and his sleepless nights were plagued with silent nightmares,_ but his coffee that tasted like her had become a bitter, necessary source of comfort and got him through the mornings to his nights. _They rescued him every morning when he trembled with the ghost of his memories._

And just like that, _Petra_ wasn't entirely gone. _She would never be gone for him._

Her presence still lingered. _And he was okay with that_.

She was entrenched in the little details of his life. As much of a personal constant to him as she had always been, only to a more devastating extent than he had intended.

No surprise there, he thought as his mouth twisted into a gentle, broken smile. She had a terribly invaluable way of burrowing into his shitty heart without permission, regardless if it was appropriate or not.

He couldn't escape the haunt of her presence. He realized he didn't want to. The ghost of her is what tethered him to this shitty reality and soothed him.

Their tea-times that plagued his night; her coffee that he made himself and still savored because he tasted her in it; these changes that he both hated and loved because they were the most personal, distinct and intimate marks of _her_ on him.

She was an irrepressible melding force; an immovable, fixed part of him that he couldn't let go.

 _And just like that_ , she had changed his morning routine again before he knew it.

She was a constant, physical ache there wasn't any cure for.

But Petra still made it work for him. Because even if she was gone, Petra felt alive and tangible to him.


	3. Chapter 3

Self-Prompts: Last word of previous prompt.

 **Clean.**

He liked watching Petra clean.

It started out as something of a necessity. He had to make sure she was doing her job correctly.

But necessity became an excuse and then simply a matter of _choice_. _His_ choice.

He liked to watch her. So he did.

And he was always careful to be discreet when he did. Period.. _He couldn't really help it._

Her brows furrowed in this cute little way when she concentrated hard on it. And she always did a _really_ _good_ job, following his every instruction to a letter. Her little attention to details pleased him. As did glimpses of her pretty profile and the splashes of light teasing her hair and skin from the corner of his carefully spying eyes.

He could feel the hum of her soft, sweet breath a meter away from where she stood. The off kilter lilts and jingles of her perky tone killing him and ingraining itself in his head; to the point _it_ _lingered_ outside of her presence. _In rooms he cleaned alone, and far-far away from her; the ghost of her happy tune never leaving him._

Sometimes he narrowed his shifty eyes before he checked his surroundings to make sure he was alone, and faintly hummed her ridiculous tune to himself... matching the beat to his vigorous dusting. Even so, he suspected she had begun to _suspect_ his affinity for her special hum somehow. He acutely felt the playful heat in the recent, little smiles she threw his way when they shared cleaning space, secret and almost knowing. A tiny wave of embarrassment began to tickle his nape in her vaguely, teasing presence and the back of his neck turned an inconspicuous red.

Maybe he was just being paranoid because he had no business allowing these _madwild sun-eating_ butterflies to shit in his rusty heart for her; but he could have sworn there was something almost telling n the bronze glint of Petra's hazel-amber gaze.

They licked the sweet bow of her singing lips and swallowed him whole, right down to his bedazzled tiptoes.

 **Tiptoes.**

He liked how Petra would have to { _he ignored the little voice that said, 'only very very, slightly'}_ , tip her tipsy, tippy tiptoes to kiss the top of his tickle-y, tingly brows. _If_ she wanted to kiss it.

 _If_ she felt like it- _If she was drunk enough to do it_. He knew _he_ was drunk enough to want it.

He was drunk enough to contemplate fisting his fingers around the strap of her shirt and pulling her up flush against him so she could do it.

 _Would she do it?_ – the intoxicated steel of his eyes widened as he felt the sharp, unexpected tug of her small fingers on _his_ straps instead.

He had just enough time for the silver embers in his gaze to ignite before he felt the blaze of her mouth closing on his, rendering him speechless.

 **Speechless.**

Levi didn't mince words. He didn't have a lot of use for words.

He rarely used words unless he felt they were necessary.

He didn't even like words. He much preferred doing the do instead of speaking the do.

So then really, it shouldn't have been that big a deal that Petra robbed him of speech once in a while.

 _But it was._ Because Hopeless. Breathless. _Speechless_ …

It was the stuff of young love and bright, silly daydreams; pathetic, stupid and pointless… _They didn't fit his short, stoic un-fluffy and unromantic, Humanity's strongest-titan-slaying image._

They suited Petra though. Even though he could swear there was nothing pathetic or stupid or pointless about her.

Just that _Petra_ was the type of girl who could make any sort of regular guy wistful about love, and spark bloody poetry and bright daydreams in her wake.

Hell _, He_ was as irregular as they came and he'd still been caught in her unwitting trap.

She already had him waxing, shitty poetry about her in his head, all the fucking time before he even realized it.

Like the summer effect she had on him when breezed into his life and the winter kills she left him with when she was gone.

All the little bloody things he couldn't help noticing about her and how his brain couldn't stop picturing and filing away useless information about her for his stupid use.

When she grits her fierce little jaw and blazes her way down, spinning her small lithe frame through the battlefield; stringing along the enemy and remorselessly spilling titan's blood alongside him.

When glimpses of her often smiles streaked through him like sunlight and made him forget she was just as jaded and weary as the rest of them vehement lot.

When she looked at him with those _sweet_ _bittersweet_ amber-gold lights, flashing a cruel tender blue haven at him, all the hardness of a soldier and the softness of a woman in them, making him want and need, and reeling him in like the besotted fool for her he was.

Cutting him down to size. Making him feel taller than he was. And every height in between and not.

Her stormy angel hue eyes and feather-light fingertips grazing his mouth and clenched jaw, effectively shutting him up unawares.

Stunning him. And cursing him. With the incurable Awkward disease.

Shit. Fuck it to all hells and heavens! He was done for. His shitty, sappy, potty mouth and all.

 _The shitty sentimental way he described Petra and the indescribable ways she made him feel was proof enough._

Because Jesus, she made him dare to be wistful and hope and dream a simple life for himself again. _With her_.

 **With Her.**

 _He thought he lost his ability to dream when he lost Farlan and Isabel._

A clean, carefree life.

No more blood. No more grime. No more hunger. No more _killing_. _They wanted out._

A fierce, clear dream on broken wistful pieces of dirty, stained glass, piercing through their starving guts.

 _Craving freedom._ A less ugly life outside of the Underground from the bottom of their hearts and the stench of their clenched, bloodied hands.

Within the walls at first. Then the Survey Corps. _Anywhere,_ as long as he was with them _._

He thought he wasn't going to become responsible for anybody's life.

 _Only Farlan and Isabel's._

 _Fighting through the blood and grime and hunger together. They had become his flesh and blood. His only friends. Isabel looking up to him and calling him Big Brother. Farlan thinking his way through for them. Levi leading them and shielding them the best he could. Isabel and her irrepressible exuberance and innocence. Farlan and his iridescent dedication and gentleness. Levi and his kind, brute strength. Their protector and unofficial leader. They were a team and they looked out for each other._ _They were a place where he belonged._

They were gone. Farlan and Isabel. But they left pieces of their empathy and dreams with him. And he found another place he could belong.

 _The talk about trust and humanity._

Farlan strategizing and doing everything he could to keep their plans afloat and bring them closer to their dreams. Keeping Levi from dirtying his hands, and extracting a promise from him to refrain from killing unnecessarily. Asking them to believe in him and trust him. Saying that if Levi was there, they would survive and could do anything.

Isabel musing about how it wasn't so bad to leave the walls and venture into the outside together with the Survey corps. Reflecting about them being willing to die and giving up their hearts for the sake of humanity seeming incomprehensible and yet…awkwardly saluting and not wanting to mess up the chances of their mission and survival. Adding that if they ever lived in the Capital, they would help transfer funds to the Survey Corps by hook or by crook. So they could go outside the walls and fight more and more.

Hange being all casual and buddy-buddy with them, giving them candy and asking for tips. Telling them their fighting techniques were awesome, and fired everyone up.

Flagran and Sayram judging them as irreverent, uncouth and unclean, and then changing their minds about them and counting them as part of their squad.

Erwin talking about making choices and living a life with no regrets. Asking him if he wanted to return to the darkness of the underground again. Asking him if the sacrifices that were made were going to go to waste. Asking him to lend his strength to Humanity's cause. Telling him that he was needed. Demanding that he believe he could make a difference. Demanding that he make his grief count by using his strength to save Humanity.

He remembered asking Farlan and Isabel to trust him. How he knew to the inside of his bones that going back into the underground wasn't what any of them had wanted.

And he knew what he had to do, the light washing over him, illuminating him to his core.

If they had lived, he knew Erwin would have won them over and they would have fought with the Survey Corps and gone outside the walls again and again.

And they still could have died. At any moment. Anywhere. Anytime. With or without him.

As long as the titans roamed free and they didn't know anything about them.

He learned the world outside was just as ugly as the world inside the walls and the underground city, but it was more free. And he was somebody with strength.

Strength to help break down the walls someday.

He made up his mind. He decided to follow Erwin instead of slitting his throat because he _understood_ him.

He had nothing left to lose. He decided to trust in him.

Trust in the vision of this man. The ghost of his friends. And his own strength and culpability.

He became arbitrarily responsible for a million more lives. He wasn't free, but he was more free than he had ever been. There was still blood, and grime and dirt and killing in his world but he lived to not regret his choices. He became Humanity's strongest ally.

And he formed his own squad on command. The Special Operations Squad. And he found something to lose again.

He met Petra. And Erd, Auruo and Gunther.

Before he knew it, they became another kind of flesh and blood to him again. Fighting through blood and grime and dirt, and killing together. And he was doing it again. Becoming distinctly and solely responsible for a few special lives. It was different from back then, but still the same in many ways.

He had subordinates he cared for. Subordinates that cared for him and looked up to him.

 _And Petra_. W _ho somehow became more than his subordinate._ _Petra,_ who somehow became special to him.

Oddly, achingly significant. A companion who melted into the spaces of his personal solitude and filled it. Because he let her in. In a way he didn't anybody else. In a way he hadn't since he lost Farlan and Isabel. And she became somebody whose company he began to crave. She became somebody he began to desire. In a way he never had. It was odd and unsettling, and he couldn't filter it. Though he tried to for the longest time. Because it wasn't supposed to have happened.

 _She_ wasn't supposed to have happened to somebody like him _._ _But she had._

 _With her_...He let himself cave.

He let himself relax and bathe in the wash of her comforting presence. He let himself breathe again and _enjoy_ her company. _And he let himself crave_.

Through it all, he had never bothered to dream for himself again until _Her_.

Only for the world and what his strength could do for them; the living and the dead ghosts of his past.

Petra had come into his life and changed that.

She had came alive for him and nudged his steel heart to life.

She was everything he ever wanted in the past reflecting back at him. Everything he would have dreamed of if he were the dreaming kind, and more.

 _Mirroring him and embodying all his ideals;the ideals of his past and his present_ ; _Of trust, and humanity, and relying on each other; Everything that was precious to the beat of his heart._ _How could he not want her?_

But there was more. Because that wasn't all she offered him. _She offered more._

She was the exception and the sole anomaly in the harsh, unforgiving realities of his existence, because she didn't just stop there. She upped her stakes and drove them straight into his heart and twisted them.

She wasn't content just to look up at him with awe and adoration. She wasn't content just to rely on him and be of use to him and have him look after her in turn.

She had to _dedicate herself to him._

 _S_ he had to _unconditionally, irrevocably,_ _devote her everything to him_ _and_ _his cause, knowing it could be the end of the beat of her heart._

And she was prepared for it. She was prepared to love the hell out of him and give her life for their cause in the wake of their living, blood-curling realities.

She would do what she had to, even if it killed her. And it was something he grew to greedily absorb about her. She soothed his silently screaming guts and settled comfortably into the depths of his aches and solitude.

 _And he paid attention to the special little details she let slip for him._

How there was always something more in the wake of her smile and her pretty face when she gazed up at him through her long lashes.

Fierce indescribable, undefinable something; _emotions_ he took a long time to place because he had never seen something like it before; and never felt anything like it until her either. Rare sprouts of feelings he'd never experienced. Sharp pangs of longings and buzzes of 'She's cute' and 'I can't look away even though I know I should'.

Simple, petty, hint of desires, of something almost domestic and romantic. Myriad, irresponsible, unassuming thoughts; like ' _wanting to spend more hours sipping tea with her_ ,' or 'stealing glimpses and staring at her in quiet when she wasn't looking', or ' feeling partial to the light bell of her voice washing over him', 'liking being on the receiving end of her smiles', 'awkwardly trying to curve his own back at her' , 'craving to seek out meaning in her tenderness to him, the light flush of her cheeks and the secret sweep of her gaze drinking him in when she didn't think he felt it, _but he did_ , and it shook him like innumerable shots of whiskey burning down his gulping throat.

 _He couldn't put a stop to them._ Petra made him want to let her in. And he did.

For the first time since forever, he let somebody in right. In the normal, regular, way everybody else did.

He let Petra in so unbearably close he could feel his breath hitch lightly in his throat when she was near. And his throat going dry and scratchy when she looked at him like he was the missing, ragged piece of her whole and the broken beat of her tripping uneven heart. Like he was Jesus and everything good and crabby in this world and she wanted all of him, and willing to devote every sacred beat of her heart and gift him the church of her soul and bind hers to his, and his sword, for endless number of eternities and beyond. And He didn't know how he could damn well discern these things unless he could feel the plague and strange range of these emotions for her himself because he had never recognized the existence of this kind of 'love' before _her_.

She was the scent of his dreams and the strength of his past reflecting back at him, tempting him, and crying out that she could-would make every inch of good they can scrape free in their crueluglyworld come alive and dead and vibrantly true for him again.

And he wanted to believe and trust in her. _And the bittersweet, devastating hope of impossible possibilities and them._

 _Because_ she was the dignified giggle to his morose funeral.

Because she had burrowed her way into his redredheart and made it home. Signing her name on it with the ink of her blood and integrity; settling into the solemn white depths of his bruised, irrepressible soul; inescapably linking herself to him; sinking into his empty blank spaces and irrevocably filling them.

 _Because Petra's existence renewed his._

She made him dream again, and gave him shattered glimpses of their shuttered 'what-if's and 'could have been's' and 'them's'.

 _And he was grateful._ Even if he never got to _live_ them.

He would rather he had a rare, fleeting taste than not. Unquenchable sips of strange unfulfilled havens to un-break him than do without.

Because he would have been incomplete if all he'd known was a lack of them.

 **Them.**

Despite appearances and expectations, Levi was a simple and unassuming man.

He didn't know _when,_ but he and Petra had become a 'them'.

And once he began to see them as 'them', he saw and spake and thinked and breathed them in the 'them' way that other 'them's' did.

Even if he didn't know it, because Levi didn't know what it was like to be a 'them' until Levi and Petra became a 'them'.

And so he began to 'them' his way through them.

When he dared to dream again, he dreamed a dream for 'them'.

When he dared to hope again, he hoped a hope for 'them'.

When he glimpsed a shooting star he didn't believe in, he whispered an odd, quiet, desperate prayer for 'them'. And he willed it to truth for them too.

When he slept, his waking nightmares morphed into soothing reveries of 'them'.

When she was gone, his nightmares came back with a vengeance; viciously tearing down the visions of 'them' that still haunted him and never left him and replaced and rearranged the vision of 'them' with a new, broken 'them'.

 _Without her, he sipped his tea on his own, devoid of the 'them'._ _And the warmth of 'them' he had grown accustomed to hug in the private, cold recesses of his heart._

 _Without her_ , _he gradually began to soften his unforgiving nightmares with the distant promise of 'them' in death._

 **Death.**

Death. He was unafraid of it.

He didn't welcome it, but he viewed it as respite.

He flirted with it but he didn't have the luxury to rage at it or unduly tempt it.

He was Humanity's Strongest.

He had offered up his dead heartbeat for Humanity.

He couldn't die without serving up his cause to the fullest.

He couldn't die for the dead that had died and left him behind to embody their wishes and dying reaches.

Y _et. Because he knew he would someday._

It was inevitable. And he was prepared for it.

 _It was written in the broken constellations of their innumerable deaths and_ _her stars,_ incomplete without him.

In the autumn gong of her white church bell. The winter cold stone of her graveyard. The red warmth and silver steel of sacrifice and resolve. The gold dart of a Father's anxiety and his own hollow, inexpressible sorrow, horrifyingly tangible in the sour, gritty blankness of his non-speech; and pale, fixed, empty eyes that stared into nothing. The dark gray pangs of his silent, dreaded aches, culminating into a private, strange sort of unsated, severe longing. The constant, weary pain of lacklustre, faded mornings without her.

In the banshee wail of indeterminable titans and humans and red, clotting blood. The slow numbing blink of his gaze hovering over her broken corpse, like a lover's aching caress, bleeding over his clean, sweet flashes of her. The death knell of her lavender death foreshadowing, and quietly waiting the inevitability of his.

An inescapable truth. Because Humanity's Strongest wasn't going to be invincible forever. It was the only thing he was sure of in his shitty, uncertain reality.

And He would do his damned best; hovering between extremes; Humanity's Strongest Living Martyr evading death's clutches for as long as he could.

Determining to never go looking for death. Knowing it will eventually find him.

Because His _life_ is _gone_ ; Only his will, his duty remained.

The only someday in his life was the inevitability of his death, and reunion with dead comrades and family and _Her._

When Petra was alive, a simple terse, alive thought filled him, ' _Until death do us part.'_

When Petra died, a dead quiet permeated him, and every beat of his resolved, struggling heart screamed silently, whispering its broken litany to her, if she was listening, ' _Until death do us unite._ '

Because when Death came for her and did them cruelly part, it bound him and held ransom on his fatal life even as it set her free.

When it comes for him someday, it wouldn't be cruel but kind.

A final, sweet aching freedom, bridging his soul to hers in endless abandon of death; an unknown quantity of life after life.

Because _with her_ , he found a rare eternity of sweet, serene certainty in a world full of ugly uncertainties.

And the certainty that Death could bring for them was something he craved in the darkest, deepest, lonely pits and crevasses of his heart.


End file.
